Painfully Shy
by SilenceIsInfinite
Summary: On an eventful day, Max and Fang learn their biggest secrets about each other: they cut. Will this revelation work for the better or worse? Will anyone else find out? AU. A little OOC. No wings.
1. Not a Stranger

**New story! It's really depressing in the beginning, I'm sorry! . then again, this whole plot is kind of sad. Have fun reading this! My third story :3**

**Disclaimer: You know, it's kind of depressing that I don't own Maximum Ride. And, also, the song used here is "Cut" by Plumb. Yeah, I don't own that, either. Uber annoying. **

* * *

**FANG POV**

_Liar, _I wrote it on the paper and ripped the word off.

_Freak, hatred, pain, lies, death_. All of those were written on the old sheet of paper in the black sharpie. I could hear the water of the stream in the background.

I picked up all of the tiny slips of paper and threw them into the water, watching as the ink smudged. All of the day's secrets were gone, but I still didn't feel better.

Emotions stink.

I think we can come to an agreement on that: it's annoying to be bored, to love, to hate, to do all of that. _Expressing _emotions stunk, too, so I kept my face hidden by my impassive mask. All of my walls up, where nobody could break through them. That's what my life had come down to.

And I hated it.

* * *

Somehow, I managed to drag myself from the hidden stream I'd found two years ago and walk past the old playground where I used to go with my parents. I saw a girl from my school on one of the swings, hunched over. And then I heard a smooth and melodious voice.

_I'm not a stranger_

_No, I am yours_

_With crippled anger_

_And tears that still drip sore_

Who was she? I had seen her before, but my brain wasn't operating right. I stopped at the entrance of the playground, but I could only see her dirty blonde hair that was hanging down her back.

_A fragile frame aged with misery_

_And when our eyes meet_

_I know you see_

I couldn't move. Her voice was so beautiful, I was stuck into position. My black started falling into one of my eyes, but I didn't care. She just looked so _familiar_.

_I do not want to be afraid_

_I do not want to die inside just to breathe in_

_I'm tired of feeling so numb_

_Relief exists; I find it when I am cut_

The last two lines rang in my mind. _I am tired of feeling so numb. Relief exists; I find it when I am cut. _It was the worst habit I had. I'm so tired of feeling numb, that I don't know when I'll feel alright again.

Who was this girl? Dirty blonde hair… That didn't narrow the possibilities at all. I looked at her clothing: a black tank top, I think. I couldn't quite tell from being behind her. Her feet dug into the ground suddenly, and she stopped singing to suck in a breath, as if wincing. And then she released it, as if relieved. What was she doing, hunched over? I looked at her shoes again, and I knew who she was.

Those red Converse high-tops, the dirty blonde hair, it was obvious now. The girl was Max Ride. I found myself curious as to what she was doing, and why was singing such a sad song.

I could move again. I walked silently, blending with the shadows –it's what I can do best—as I saw her in halfway.

It _was _Max. Max, the school's badass and loner; she was sarcastic and snarky, but everyone thought she was hilarious and pretty.

I was one of those people, of course.

_What is she doing! _I suddenly thought harshly. Dripping on the sand of the playground was blood. Literally, Max was cutting her wrists. But why? Everyone at school liked her, even though she didn't like talking to people. She was always rolling her eyes or telling a joke.

_I may seem crazy_

_Or painfully shy_

_And these scars wouldn't be so hidden_

_If you would just look me in the eye_

_I feel alone here and cold here_

_Though I don't want to die_

_But the only anesthetic that makes me feel anything kills inside_

She cuts to relieve pain. But _what _pain? There was always an amused glint in her eye when she called out any of the sluts at school. But then it hit me.

She was the school's loner. Meaning, she's always alone. _I feel alone here and cold here_; is what the song said. No wonder. But there was one thought that wouldn't go away:

What could she be hiding that was worse than what I was?

* * *

I walked into lunch the next day, looking for Max. Sure enough, she was sitting alone against a tree, not even bothering to eat her lunch. She was also wearing a black hoodie that said '_take a picture, it'll last longer_' on the front. She wore it all the time, probably to hide the scars.

I sat down next to her.

"Can I help you?" she asked, like I was bothering her.

"Nah, I'm just here because the dirt here is a better shade of brown here than anywhere else."

She looked at me disbelievingly.

"What do you _think _I'm doing here, Max?" I asked, rolling my eyes.

"Talking above your word limit? Creeping on innocent girls?"

I smirked at her. "Creeping? That's a little harsh. I'm talking to you because you were sitting here alone, stupid."

"Lay off the stupid remark, okay? I'm proud to say my IQ is higher than what your sixty is."

"Yeah, a whopping sixty five," I said, rolling my eyes.

"Five more than you'll ever have," she pointed out.

We were silent then. It wasn't awkward, it was comfortable. Max and I just studied each other's faces. She had full lips, and chocolate brown eyes that had gold in them. Her hair had sun streaks in them, now that I looked at her properly.

"So, I've been meaning to ask you this," she stated, breaking the silence. We didn't look away from each other those, kept our gaze. She looked at me in the eye, I noticed. "Are you ever going to wear anything other than black?"

"Are you?" I retorted.

"Nope. Favorite color, it is. Are you emo?" she asked. I flinched involuntarily, hoping she didn't notice. "Oh, you are, are you? Have you cut yourself lately?" she taunted.

Her eyes were shining with amusement. She looked happy. I'd believe her, if I hadn't seen her cut yesterday.

"Have you?" I asked, not skipping a beat.

She froze for a few seconds, but it was gone before I knew it had been there. Max smirked at me playfully, like she hadn't just panicked in her mind. "Why would I cut myself?"

"You didn't answer me."

"Neither did you," she said. And quick as a flash, she pushed up my jacket sleeve. The exposed skin felt cold against the outside air. Max's eyes widened as she saw the scars from previous cuts, and the ones from just this morning. My arm was completely covered with them, I couldn't really find space.

"Max…" I started, but trailed off. What was there to say?

"Take off your jacket," she ordered. I sighed, doing as she told me. I knew Max wouldn't tell, I had potential black-mail on her for doing the same thing. "Hold out your arms."

Again, I did as she said. Cuts upon cuts were on my arms, barely any smooth skin on me. They were hideous, I knew that. Max ran her finger from my shoulder to my palm, feeling the rough skin.

"Don't tell," I whispered. She whipped her head up at me, as if forgetting I was there in the first place. Her eyes didn't leave a trace of the glint of happiness in them earlier, they were filled with sadness.

"I won't," she whispered back.

Reluctantly, she threw off her jacket and showed me her arms, too. They were just like mine, beaten and scratched and cut.

I grinned at her, and she reciprocated.

"What's your story?" she asked.

* * *

**Oh, that's fun. Should I continue this? :P I don't know.**

**~SilenceIsInfinite**


	2. Reassurance

**Holy shit. Ten reviews for the first chapter? How sadistic _are _you people? Thank you for the support! It really made me want to update. Oh, and it made me guilty that I didn't update sooner, you sadists. :P**

**This is completely off topic... but I made slutty brownies today. Ever had 'em? Slutty brownies? Google it. **

**Disclaimer: I don't own Maximum Ride. James Patterson does**

**The song I used in this chapter was "One X" by Three Days Grace.**

* * *

**FANG POV**

"My story?" I asked, gulping. It was definitely a story I didn't want to tell, or relive, even in memories. I'd always shut myself out from the memories, and now wasn't an exception. I didn't want to remember.

I wanted to forget.

"Yeah. Like, why do you cut?" she asked. Max was tracing the lines against my arm, but not in the seductive way that a few girls have done against my sleeve. It was more subconscious, like she didn't know what she was doing.

I paused, and then looked the particularly deep cut I'd done this morning on my forearm.

"Because," I whispered dejectedly. "It's better to feel pain than nothing at all." I turned away from Max's stare, fixing my eyes on the rows of cuts that I'd done to myself. That _I'd _done. I needed to change the subject. "What about you?" I asked.

"If you won't tell me a detailed story, I won't, either. Let's just say," she said, pressing her finger on a scar that still hurt when I did so much as touch it. I didn't flinch. I welcomed the pain. "It's perfectly fine to suffer in silence."

I nodded. She felt the same way as I did. "Does anyone else know?" I asked. "I saw you yesterday, cutting in the park. That's why I came and talked to you. Your mask is better than mine, Max. I'm kind of envious."

Max didn't say anything, but continued tracing the scars on my arms. Her touch made my cold skin warmer, I realized. The warmth was something unusual to me, foreign. I'd always been the one out in the dark, lost in the cold. This was different, though, like someone was there for me. Someone just as empty.

Someone who _knew_.

Max's dry laugh brought me back to reality. "Nobody else but you."

We both looked up from my arm, and into each other's eyes; it felt like an unspoken agreement. Her brown eyes poured into my black ones. It was like she was trying to tell me something, trying to pour some emotion into my empty black orbs. And with each passing second, and each time I looked into her chocolate brown eyes, I couldn't help but feel like it was so _urgent, _like I needed to know. I couldn't read her, though. I could read anyone, and that included teachers, parents, friends, anyone. I knew when people were lying to me. But Max hadn't, not once. I toyed with the lip ring I'd gotten a few months ago. How had we come to this situation, where we were both giving out our biggest secrets?

"How long?" her voice broke through the comfortable silence. We didn't stop looking into each other's eyes, though. Max didn't bother to specify, we both knew what she meant.

"Four years," I answered, sighing. "We're fifteen now, freshman year. I started when I was eleven, at the end of fifth grade. How about you?"

"Four, too," she agreed. "It hurt a lot at first," she stared at her arms. "But it didn't hurt as much as…the other things."

I didn't ask her to continue. She didn't look like she wanted to. I'd be a hypocrite if I asked her to keep telling me about it—I was keeping secrets from her, too. It was only fair.

So, why was I curious?

Why was I curious that the most sarcastic and hilarious girl in the ninth grade was hurting so much? Why didn't I feel sympathy, but instead, remorse? Like _I _was making Max relive memories, to make her feel scared?

Even though I'd just _really _talked to her for the first time, I pulled Max into a hug, my scarred arms wrapping around her. She was wearing a tank top; she would definitely feel the rough skin on her back. Max hesitated for a moment, but returned the hug. We just held each other in an embrace, not saying anything. We didn't cry, because it wasn't emotional. It was just comforting.

And that's what I really liked. I liked the fact that we didn't say anything, that we weren't awkward around each other. The fact that we'd shared the same secret was like a bond; it made me feel like I wasn't alone. The embrace was numbing, like all the times I'd cut. There were no reassurances. There were no 'it'll be okay's, and no 'it'll be alrights's.

Because, if it was going to be okay, we wouldn't be this broken.

I pulled back. We didn't say anything about what we had just done. There was no need to, it didn't mean anything but comfort.

Max was the first to break our comfortable silence. "Come to the park after school, I have something to show you." Like she was about to forget, she added, "Bring whatever you use."

Again, she didn't specify. We both knew. It was like instead of saying _bring whatever you use_, she way saying _bring what you use to cut yourself_.

The lunch bell rang, and we quickly put on our jackets. People were coming from their conversations on the courtyard and back into the building, and were sure to see us if we didn't hurry.

Max shoved her head through the hole for her head in the sweatshirt, and then looked at me expectantly. I nodded at her.

We turned and went back into the building, masks at the ready. Max was greeted by an African American girl with dark hair and almond shaped eyes. She was babbling about something, using hand gestures to eccentuate whatever she was saying. Max nodded eagerly, like she was listening, grinning at the parts that were supposed to be funny, for the girl's benefit.

I couldn't help but notice how fake it looked.

* * *

I kicked the sand of the playground around, making circular motions as I waited for Max on the swing. I held my razor delicately in my hands. I kept it in my backpack. I had one for home, one for school, and one for when I went out. Normally, I didn't keep one in my pockets unless I was going out for dinner. I made sure I wore skinny jeans that night, so people wouldn't think there were things in my pockets.

The touch of the razor was cold, so unlike Max's hands. Just thinking about the emptiness that I had made me sick of myself, and I wanted to forget all about it. To feel numb again.

So I dragged the metal razor against two puffy scars, sucking in a breath from the pain. The pain quickly subsided. I laughed lightly, grinning at the blood that was dripping on the sand, tainting it.

Just like they had tainted me.

"No…" I mumbled. There was no way that I would think of them. I dragged the razor on my wrists, barely avoiding a vein. I didn't want to die so easily. I wanted to suffer.

_It's perfectly fine to suffer in silence_, Max's words reminded me. _Well, _I thought,_ I must be doing a pretty good job. _

As I kept slashing against my skin, I couldn't help but think I was in a similar position as Max. She was singing, though. I hadn't sung since I was eleven. Max hadn't come yet, and I had been waiting for five minutes. What should make me think she'd be here in a few minutes? She was taking her time. Maybe I could sing a song. I'd forgotten what my voice sounded like.

As I let out a sigh of relief from the blade on my skin, I opened my mouth to sing.

_Do you think about_

_Everything you've been through_

_You never thought you'd be so depressed_

_Are you wondering:_

_Is it life or death?_

_Do you think that there's no one like you_

That wasn't entirely true, as of today. Max was like me. I smiled as I dug into my wrist.

_We are. We are. We are._

_We are the ones _

_We get knocked down_

_We get back up and stand above the crowd_

_We are one_

_We are the ones_

_We get knocked down_

_We get back up and stand above the crowd_

_We are one_

We stood above the crowd. Yes, but in which methods did we use to get there? How did I get to 'stand above the crowd'? Through numbing myself with a mask? By feeling pain, rather than nothing at all?

_The life I think about_

_Is so much better than this_

_I never thought I'd be stuck in this mess_

_I'm sick of wondering_

_Is it life or death_

_I need to figure out who's behind me_

For effect, I turned around, and stopped singing abruptly. It was Max. I was too caught up in my cuts and in my singing that I hadn't heard her. She took a seat next to me on the swing, and stared at the cuts on my arms.

Self-consciously, I pressed my sleeve against the cuts, trying to make them bleed less. It stung when I touched them, and I relished in the feeling.

"You use a razor, too?" Max's voice caught my off guard. My razor was still in my right hand.

"Yeah, I do."

"That's some pretty impressive self-butchery," she commentated, gesturing to my arms.

"Thanks?"

"There's the Fang I've only had a conversation to once before today!" she said, nudging my arms. I half-smiled, and pulled out some bandages from my backpack. I cleaned myself up, Max staring at me the entire time. "One to three worded responses. Bad, Fang!" She gave me a genuine smile, one so dissimilar to the fake grin to that girl at the end of lunch.

"So, why am I here?" I asked.

"Because you think I'm amazing."

"No... Was it because you scared the crap out of me today?"

"I can tell you this, Fang: not a lot scares you. Nothing really scares you when you do that to yourself." She nodded her head to my arm that was covered in six bandages. I nodded in agreement.

"Seriously, what is it?" I questioned.

"We're going to play Truth," she told me. "Cutter edition." She held up her razor, a wicked smile on her face.

* * *

**That was... deep. I'm so weird. Oh, Fang, so cryptic. What are we going to do with you.**

**Oh, all of you softies who thought that this is the extent of the sadness/cutting parts? It's not. There's going to be more, because I roll like that. If you haven't noticed, there's freaking gore in this. If you don't like it, you pansies-because I know who you are-go frolic in a meadow with a world peace t-shirt. Uh-huh. I dare you.**

**~SilenceIsInfinite**


	3. Truth: Cutter's Edition

**Well HIYA! It seems like I'm updating this a lot. I really really like this story, so I don't really care if you don't. If you want to bag on it?**

**By all means, go ahead. Because I don't give a damn. I like it, and that's all I need. I didn't ask for your aproval. :D**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Truth, Sarah Dessen does. I don't own Maximum Ride, James Patterson does! Blah, I hate disclaimers. **

* * *

I blinked. "How do we play?"

"You know the rules of Truth, right?" Max asked, twirling her razor in between her middle finger and index finger. Her eyes were excited.

I shook my head no. Max looked like wanted to face palm, and I didn't blame her. I was pretty clueless when it came to games that people played with friends—I lacked experience there.

"You're unbelievable…" she mumbled angrily, trailing off. "Whatever, it doesn't really matter. The rules are simple: we ask each other anything, but there's a catch to all this."

"Let me guess: we have to tell the truth?" I said bluntly. She was making it really obvious for me to answer, and I couldn't help but think that she might think of me as an idiot. It wasn't a definite zero. Max was condescending and irritable towards many people.

She nodded. "That," she said, stopping the twirling motions with her fingers. "And also the fact that if you don't tell the truth, you lose."

I nodded, mulling things over. One part of the game was hard for me to understand, though: the 'cutter edition', as she put it. How would we be put into the equation of Truth? Would the questions revolve around our cutting habits? Would we have to cut in some situations?

Whatever it was, though, I had no idea how we would be in it for cutting.

"And the cutting part comes where?" I asked finally.

Max made a ticking noise with her lips, and shook her head exaggeratedly. "You'll find out. Let's just play."

We swayed a bit on the swings for a little bit, my razor in my lap. My hands grabbed onto the semi-rusted chains. I could feel my pulse thumping against my skin right where the cuts in my arms were. Each little pulsating thump made my cuts sting. It was painful bliss, a guilty pleasure. I was getting impatient, though. I didn't know if Max wanted me to cut right now, but I felt like I needed to.

In a fluid motion, I grabbed my razor and shrugged off my jacket. Max did the same. I faintly wondered why, but then I thought better of it when the conclusion dawned on me. This was the only time we could act normally without worrying if people could see our scars—we had our own. My lips curled into a small smile.

This was something that Max and I could only do.

"I'll go first," she said. I blinked a few times, my desire to cut remembered. Max held up her razor. "What's your story?" she asked, razor at her skin.

I thought for a few moments. It looked like Max was counting seconds, so I let the words escape my mouth, not caring that I would be plagued with the memories.

"Neglect," I started off. Max looked un-amused, so I continued. "My parents left one night, and didn't come back. That way, I fended for myself. They haven't come back, so I don't like to think about it. Does that satisfy you?"

I bet it didn't, but I didn't want to say anymore. I didn't want to remember more than I had to.

She nodded, and then spoke up. "It took you four seconds to start. I'm impatient. This is how we go to cutter's edition—I get to cut you for what seems like a length of whatever time you hesitated for. The longer it takes to answer, the longer the cut we do. And we're trying to make it hurt, even though we might want it. It's like punishment," she said, twirling her razor, that same wicked smile on her face, "But my version."

At this revelation, I wondered briefly if Max was insane. Cutting is a love-hate relationship, no matter what weapon it's done with. You love the pain, but you hate that you're doing it to yourself. Maybe I wouldn't feel so guilty knowing someone _else _was inducing the pain? It was like killing your best friend, but without the hate of it, only the love part.

Kind of ironic, seeing as Max and I don't even have a friendship, just a curiosity about each other.

I held out my arm, and Max took my razor. I took hers and put in my pocket. I noticed that it looked as if she sharpened it. It was a good idea, come to think of it.

The thoughts left me mind as the cool razor dug into my skin. I let out an incoherent sound of happiness and pain, the two mixed into a weird sound.

It hurt so much, but it felt so good, like the earlier thoughts of my parents were leaving my head and drowning in the nearby creek, left behind forever. How could Max do this? It was like I was fading into joyful oblivion, a feeling I hadn't felt in years; one especially not made from the hand of pain.

Of course—I would be the one to be _happy _about pain. It wasn't a surprise; I was messed up. _We _were messed up.

The razor left my skin, and I went back into normal.

"Damn," I said, inspecting the four inch cut on my arm, "That hurt like hell." I grinned at her, and her eyes widened. I was freaking out on the inside: I hadn't smiled like that since the night… they left.

"I try," she said. I pulled out a bandage and tied it onto my arm tightly to stop the bleeding. I pressed down on it. It still stung, like the razor was lodged in my skin and being poked repeatedly.

_I wouldn't mind that_, I thought. I was insane, I knew it, but I didn't care anyway. My life was insane. Max was insane.

And this was like bonding time.

"What's _your _story?" I asked.

Max froze. In my head, I was keeping track of the seconds passing, hoping to inflict a worse pain on her, but on the outside, my face was placid.

Three seconds later, Max responded. "Abuse," she stated, looking at me coldly in the eyes like I had just punched her in the face. "I'm abused by my dad. I hate it, but it's ironic how _more _pain makes me feel better. The beatings are the only thing about pain I don't like, though." She shrugged like it was nothing. "How long…?"

"Three seconds."

"Ha! I beat you!"

Max was acting perky. I could tell that her mask was on right now, even though I'd taken mine off.

"Be real with me," I surprised the both of us by saying.

"I am!" she replied happily.

I leaned in close to her, my face inches from hers. "Then take off that mask."

She looked appalled that someone could read her. I was getting better at it, and she was getting better at seeing through me, too. She composed herself, and I pulled back. Max held out her arm.

"Nope," I said. I pushed her scarred arms back at her, and she looked away, embarrassed. I wanted her to forget, too. She had put a mask on, obviously keeping out any memories that were flowing through her brain. Max couldn't block them out as well as I could. I reached out a hand and turned Max's face to look at me. "Here," I said, touching her lip softly.

She needed to forget. I grabbed her razor, digging it into the corner of her lip, dragging it three inches up, and avoiding all of the veins that could kill her. I moved the razor slowly and deeply, so each inch I went across felt like _hours_. When I was away from her lip, Max grinned while looking at me as I kept going.

We were definitely insane to be doing this to each other.

I pulled back, throwing a few paper towels at Max. The cut went from the corner of her right lip to the side of her face. She looked like she was slashed by a monster.

_Good, _I thought, _because I _am _a monster_.

* * *

We kept playing, and I'd learned quite a few things about Max—she cut because she was lonely, even though everyone liked her _because _she didn't depend on anyone. It was more of a reason to be repulsed.

Max's favorites included chocolate chip cookies, the color blue, the Legends of Zelda, and people who understood her.

She said she wanted to be a writer if she grew up. I found it funny, the way she worded it. The _if _was the operative word in that sentence, like she expected to die young.

Max loved singing, and thought I was really good at it. She also thought my lip ring was hot—the answer of the '_what do you like the best about me?' _question I'd given her—which surprised me. It was just a black ring that wrapped over my lower lip.

I'd also given away more secrets than I even knew about myself. At least we were on an understanding: we were insane. And now, we weren't alone.

It was a sick game, the cutter's edition of Truth. Did we care, though? No.

* * *

**What did you think? :D This chapter was really fun to write. I know, I'm disturbing, but deal with it. **

**~SilenceIsInfinite**


	4. Plagued

*****READ IF YOU HAVE NOTHING BETTER TO DO, BUT THERE ARE ANNOUNCEMENTS INSIDE!*****

**This chapter is potentially boring. Just saying.**

**I've gotten 4 PMs from people that say, "How did you come up with Painfully Shy?" **

**Here's the answer. It's based off of my best friend, Blake (LOL. You'll get why this is funny after this chapter), and he's a cutter. Yeah, he's 14 (His birthday was on Thursday!), but Max and Fang are 15 in this! Anyway, he has a really rough life. We have a mutual obsession with Zelda and Maximum Ride. He reads this, too. Oh, crap. HEY, BLAKE! SORRY THAT I'M POSTING YOUR LIFE STORY FOR THE WORLD TO SEE! Relax, no one we know reads this but you. XD. **

**Okay, that's it for that matter.**

**ALSO. Next week, I'm going to a rec. camp that is supposed to help me get better from my Lyme's Disease. If you've been reading my other story, you don't need to continue looking at this, because I already posted what's happening on it. ANYWAY. I'm going to be gone from July 8th to August 5th. HUGE AMOUNT OF TIME. That being said, I'm going to update more frequently on both of my stories this week as compensation, even though it won't be enough.**

**That was important, huh. Anyway!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Maximum Ride, James Patterson does!**

**P.S. I made a username joke in this chapter. First person to find it gets a shout out~!**

* * *

I opened the door to my house, walking up the stairs to the kitchen. Each step groaned and creaked from lack of use. I dropped my backpack onto the ground, hearing it hit the hardwood floor with a _plunk_. My foot latched under one of the rungs of a wooden stool under the table, and I dragged it out while hearing it screech against the floor.

It was silent in the house, like it had been for the past four years. The silence was deafening, almost infinite, consuming me in the darkness.

It was late at night. The electricity had gone out in the beginning of the sixth grade, which was irritating to say the least. Operating without electricity meant living off of room temperature bottled water and food that couldn't be refrigerated. I dealt with it, though, like I had dealt with everything else that happened in my life.

By cutting.

My life was split into two categories: before cutting, and after cutting. It revolved around what I was doing before I cut, and what I did after I cut. They were basically the same, except before cutting was having the _desire _to cut, and afterwards was the _guilt _of having done it. The time in which after cutting went back into before cutting was when the guilt was replaced with the itching to forget, to numb. It was a never ending cycle.

I only stayed home to eat or sleep. Other than that, I did everything outside of the house. That way, memories wouldn't plague me in places where _they _had been. Homework was done at the library. Free time was spent out of the neighborhood. I hated being home. And when I _was _home, I never strayed past the kitchen and my room.

I picked up a piece of stale bread, chewing it slowly. Money was a problem, too, but I never thought too much about it. I worked when I could, even though I didn't think living conditions mattered. I didn't need a lot of money, either, seeing as how I lived off of fifteen dollars a week for just food. Sometimes it had to be more, if my clothes didn't fit right anymore, or if I ran out of hygiene supplies. I showered in the hidden stream I'd found. If not there, there was a creek by the playground. But nobody else knew about the stream.

It was hard, when your parents left you all alone. For four years. Without ever coming back…

A memory hit me like a wave. I knew I was going to relive something I didn't want to see. I spit out the bread and crept to the ground, my hands pushing against my ears. It wasn't any use, though. I couldn't draw the memory into to the back of my mind again.

"_Dad! Mom! Where are we going?" I asked, my black hair flopping over my eyes as I hopped up and down in excitement. _

_"Your mother and I are going to the park," Dad said. Mom stiffened, but Dad grabbed her hand and she softened again. A fake smile etched onto her face._

"_We'll be back soon," she assured me. I nodded my head. _

"_When?"_

_Mom looked away and started down the steps of the porch, a frown on her face. Dad looked at me and laughed nervously. _

"_We're not going to be gone for a while," he soothed. "Just for a few hours."_

_I thought for a moment. My attention turned to their bags on the ground. _

"_Then why are you taking so many things with you?" I tilted my head to the side._

"_You ask too many questions, Blake," Dad said, ruffling my hair. "See you soon."_

Blake: my given name. At the mere thought of it, I screamed, pressing my hands into my ears harder. _I needed to forget, _I thought. _Before all I do is remember._

I stood up, tears filling my eyes. It was dark. I scrambled to find the razor on the kitchen table, and then noticed that it was sharper.

It was Max's.

_Crap! _I thought to myself. I couldn't use Max's razor. I fumbled with the sink and washed off all of her blood. _Hurry_, I thought, cleaning it off.

And then I dug it into my skin, letting the tears slip down my eyes.

When I was in the seventh grade, I had accidentally hit a vein. I was taken to a hospital, and was bombarded with questions about the scars all over my arms. They also asked where my parents were. My excuse was: "They're on a business trip. I'm staying with my best friend." I pleaded with my only friend's mother to go along with the story, that I'd tell her everything afterwards.

So she agreed to it.

I studied veins and arteries carefully. I experimented on how much pressure I could use to cut, asking questions to myself like: _at what point do I bleed_? Needless to say, I was a pro. That way, I'd never have to go to the hospital again. Cutting was an art.

The art of numbing.

The pain lessened with each slash. The blood dripped into the sink, turning into a lighter pink from the water. The blood looked black against my arm in the darkness. I laughed. Black blood, to fit the color of my soul.

How fitting.

I finished up, slashing my arms over and over again until I was sure that it was all I could do before beginning to lose too much blood. Reaching into the cupboards, I plucked a box of bandages and disinfectant. I could never be too sure about a razor that wasn't mine.

I wiped all of the blood that was sluggishly emerging from my arms, and started pouring disinfectant on my arms. I sucked in a breath, letting it go at the pain. _I am truly a monster_, I thought to myself. _A monster on a course bound for destruction_.

My lips curled into a maniacal smile.

I put bandages on my arms, pressing down on them. There was only so much blood that I could lose without fainting. I'd learned that the hard way.

A thought occurred to me: _I can't stay here the night. _There were just too many places where they had been in that house. The best place to go would be the old playground.

I grabbed a blanket and a pillow. It was February, and it was biting cold for Colorado, even though I didn't live in the mountains. I practically ran to the playground.

I found shelter in the miniature tube that kids often climbed in. I didn't think much about school tomorrow, just thinking about forgetting.

Sleep was another way for that to happen.

* * *

I couldn't fall asleep. I faintly wondered how much time it had been since I'd come here, knowing it'd had been over two hours.

I needed to stretch. I untangled myself from the blanket I'd brought and stepped outside into the moonlight.

There was a figure there, also. One with blonde hair. I squinted, trying to make out her features, but instead noticed that she was sleeping underneath the little bridge in case it snowed or rained. I came to a conclusion when I saw her red Converse.

"Max?" I said out loud.

She woke up immediately, jumping at the sound of her name. Her head hit the bottom of the bridge, her swearing profusely under her breath. I repeated her name, and Max turned to the sound of my voice, looking at me with a confused expression.

"What are you doing here?" she asked, walking to where I was standing.

"Sleeping." That was the best thing I could think of.

"Don't you have a house?"

"Don't _you_?" I asked. It was like we were replaying earlier today.

"Seriously, Fang."

"I...remembered something that I didn't want to, and it was just," I let out a sigh, "Too much."

She nodded in understanding. "My dad kicked me out, and said that if I ever came home, he'd kill me." She frowned. "I don't doubt that."

"You can stay with me, if you want." The words were out of my mouth before I knew it.

Max lifted her eyebrows. "Oh?"

I nodded. The words were out now, there was no point in taking them back. "I don't have any electricity, or running water, though. You're going to have to make fifteen bucks a week for your own food and supplies. We bathe in this stream I found."

"Ah," Max said wistfully. "The perfect life."

I grinned at her. Max's eyes widened again. "Better than yours?"

"Totally." She grinned at me this time. Like I was about to forget, I pressed her razor in her hand.

"You're going to have to teach me how to sharpen it," I said. "I used it. It was just...there. I cleaned it off beforehand, though, so don't worry about me getting sick."

Max didn't say anything as she dug into her pocket to retrieve my razor. "Same thing here."

I grinned at her. "So, wanna live with me?" I said it casually.

"I've got nothing better to do."

"Ouch," I said, feigning hurt.

"That's an awful reply, seeing as we both like pain."

I rolled my eyes. "Whoops," I said, holding my hands up in surrender. "My bad."

* * *

**Chapter is DONE! And it's only... 1 AM right now! Fancy! Man, I love this story. I just thought I should say that.**

**CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM IS ACCEPTED! I want to hear what you think about this, please! **

**~SilenceIsInfinite**


	5. He Knows

**_Um, hello... I'm Blake. Yeah, I know that this story is about me. Yeah, I know that I'm a cutter. Deal with it. This is where you ask yourself, "why isnt' Abby the one writing the author's note?", or for all of you who don't know that her name is Abby, "why isn't SilenceIsInfinite the one writing the author's note?" Well, here's the answer: she's lazy. She made me edit this. I go all the way to her house (I needed to borrow her copy of Kingdom Hearts II), and she makes me edit this in exchange. It's annoying, but I thought I'd be annoying and make the Author's Note. Now, let's have fun._**

**_1) Abby is based off the Max in this story! You know what that means._**

**_2) She's like 1/2 an Iggy. She's half blind._**

**_3) Abby is stubborn and won't let me update chapters while she's gone because she won't let me borrow her guitar in exchange._**

**_I'm evil. :D. -Blake_**

* * *

The lunch room was giving me a headache the second I walked through the double doors. All around me, students who didn't bother to know my name were being too loud while eating and talking. I didn't bother to bring lunch to school, there wasn't anything for me to eat at home. Despite all of the laughing at school, all it did was bother me. Maybe I didn't get much sleep last night with Max at the playground.

Max hadn't moved in yet. We were scheduled to go to her house while her dad was at work after school today, and then bring anything worthwhile into my house.

She said there wasn't much to bring.

I opened the other set of doors at the end of the lunchroom to the courtyard, walking straight towards the old tree that Max always sat underneath. It was an oak, a tall tree that easily towered over the school building. Its branches were bare from the bitter February cold. I smiled to myself as I remembered the first thing I had said to her when it counted: _nah, I'm just here because the dirt here is a better shade of brown than anywhere else._

I acted nonchalant, so sure of myself. Max didn't know anything about me. The only time we had ever spoken was during Music, and I had only given a few words to her. How much of a shock it must have been to find all of the cuts on my arms, knowing I had done it to myself? Did she feel the same way that I did when I saw her on the swing set, singing with such a pained voice? My arms were, no, _are _hideous. Was it a shock from reality to see that on me, instead of her? Briefly, I wondered if she had felt the same thing I did.

But what _had _I felt knowing that Max and I were one of the same?

Hope. An emotion I particularly hate. I hoped Max wouldn't look down at me at the revelation that I was a cutter. I had hoped that Max would open up to me faster than I would; a thought only done in vain. I hoped Max and I wouldn't feel so alone after knowing our biggest secrets about each other—but there were many more secrets to be pushed into the back of our minds, not wanting to be unraveled. It was like Pandora's Box, hope being the only thing left inside after forcing all of the other emotions out. Hope was a last resort, was an emotion that was meant solely for people to use to cling onto to life. It was desperate.

It was like cutting.

I shook my head. Just _thinking _the word 'cutting' made me want to do it. It was a chain reaction, starting with before cutting. I didn't need the transition today, especially not in the middle of school. _Especially _not right now, where the entire ninth grade was in one place. But it was almost exactly like hope: it didn't go away until it was satisfied with itself.

I made my way towards Max, who was looking at me rather confusedly. I didn't blame her. My jaw was clenched, my teeth gritted, and my eyes were narrowed. I had both of my hands in my sweatshirt pocket. My hair was no doubt messy from me nervously running my hand through it, a habit that started up when I was paranoid around my secret.

I plunked down next to Max, our backs against the tree trunk.

"Who peed in your cheerios this morning?" she asked with a smirk.

I toyed with my lip ring: another nervous habit. I thought for a moment, wondering if I should tell her the truth about what I was feeling. Would she care? The thoughts raced in my mind as I thought about her potential answer in three seconds. _Whatever_, I thought.

Through gritted teeth, I responded. "I need to cut."

Max nodded in understanding. "What set you off this time?"

"Hope."

Max frowned, no doubt trying to understand why hope and cutting would be connected. As she went through the same thought process as I did, I plucked a few pieces of grass from the ground, making knots in them to pass the time. I pulled on the two ends tightly and the grass broke in half like a twig. The word 'cut' was bouncing off of my head. It was overpowering, the need. My hands itched at my sides.

"Do you have your razor?" she asked suddenly, breaking the silence.

"I always do," I said. I pulled out my—now sharpened as of last night, a product of when I couldn't sleep—razor from my jean pocket and twirled it with my fingers like she had done before. Her face showed recognition.

"Well, there you go. You can cut."

"Here?" I asked disbelievingly. Why would we cut right where teachers and students who could see us were?

"No, at the Eiffel Tower," Max said, rolling her eyes. I didn't bother to react to it, though. Would anyone see me? Did I _care _if anyone saw me?

The cool metal of the razor was begging me for usage. What was stopping me? I had extra bandages in my pocket. Who was going to quit their conversations while the two loners of the school cut themselves? Was it that big of a deal?

"_You ask too many questions, Blake."_

My mind went on overdrive. Fluidly, I peeled off my jacket and dug the razor into my flesh, scraping and slashing while tears welled in my eyes. Max was sitting right next to me, the sight making her take her razor out, too.

It was too much. Too much to see that your life was in the hands of a razor, one of your only friends. Your family didn't love you, didn't love you enough to bring you with them or set things right with you when you didn't do anything wrong. To keep so many things to yourself, when all you wanted to do was let it out…

The tears were threatening to pour. Max and I knew it.

"Let me help you with that," Max said with an eager smile on her face. She threw off her jacket, clad in another black tank top. Her bare arms were exposed. I felt a sharp pain on my arm. Max began swiping into one of the scars that hurt more than ever. I gasped, and Max dug deeper. This is what I wanted to do. This is what helped me. This was something that made everything feel better.

No matter how wrong it was.

While Max began slashing me with her razor, I pulled back and let her do some work. I faintly told her to be careful, that I didn't want to hit a vein. She nodded in agreement, mumbling something like _'there's no way I'd let you leave me alone' _to herself while moving some blood away from my arm. The crimson streaks dirtied my arm. It was a beautiful color for such a monster. I cleaned off my razor, the thoughts of my parents wrapping around my mind.

My body pressed against Max suddenly. "My turn," I breathed against her ear. She shot up like a bullet, digging the razor deeper into my skin. Blood was pouring a little bit more freely, but not enough to worry me. Max rolled her eyes and continued working on me, but I noticed that she kept an arm open.

I stared at her open arm. There was the faint sting of the razor on my flesh, but the blood was numbing my thoughts too much for me to think straight. My eyes scanned across the skin of her arm. Suddenly, I had a desire to touch it. My fingers probed against a raw cut, most likely done five minutes before I had arrived. My eyes were drawn to faint lettering on her arm. The words '_beautiful disaster'_ were etched onto her body. I traced each letter, Max shivering slightly. Normally, I would have smirked, but the scar tissue was thick. She had to have gone to the hospital for this particular cut.

"Hurry..." she mumbled, her eyes trained on the scar._  
_

Max wanted to feel numb, too. What better to do than oblige?

I positioned my razor underneath the _beautiful disaster_, and pressed downward. I dug deeply, not moving my razor, and just when the blood began to flow, I swiped my razor in a quick and clean motion. Max let out a small cry of pain, but it was the familiar: mixed with delight and agony.

Max clenched her teeth, tears welling in her eyes from the pain. Although she looked as if she were about to break down and cry, her eyes glinted with an emotion I couldn't identify. "Holy _shit_, Fang! That was awesome!" She grinned at me with that wicked and sadistic smile I had seen so many times yesterday. Max looked at our arms. "Are you ready to stop?"

I nodded. "I feel...better."

"Let's just skip. Our clothes have blood on them."

I nodded again. Simultaneously, Max and I pulled bandages out of our pockets, beginning to wipe the blood off of our bodies quickly. There was no guarantee that we wouldn't be seen. I wrapped bandages around my arms tightly, stopping the streaming blood.

It was amazing how much Max and I understood each other, even if we had only officially met just now. It was like a blockage to all of the numbing we did by ourselves. We could be monstrous and insane with each other.

I held out a hand for her to help her get up. She grabbed it, some excess blood on her hand smearing against mine. "You ready?" I asked.

"You bet. Let's just get out of here. We cut kind of deep in some places. It'd be better if-"

"Max? Fang?" A voice echoed. "Blood... Those scars... Razors..."

A student with strawberry blonde hair and a giant slash across his wide eyes stared at us. The scar was horizontal, slashing through his ice blue eyes. It was so distinct, I immediately knew who it was: James 'Iggy' Griffiths, the most well known person in our grade. His snake bites and dark clothing were a dead giveaway. What was more, his messy hair was dyed a black at the tips, giving the effect of him putting a fork in an electrical socket. He started to approach us.

"Did you guys do this to yourselves?" he asked, his tone small and quiet. He pointed to the two of us. "You have no reason to cut yourself, Max. Neither do you, Fang."

Max froze. My eyes narrowed at Iggy. He didn't know Max. He didn't know what we were going through each day, dying inside! _I do not want to die inside just to breathe in_, Max's song... she didn't want to live anymore. And neither did I. We were only here because of debts we had, because dying would be like giving up.

It was Pandora's Box, in a way.

I unclenched my fists and walked up to Iggy. He eyed my bare arms that were so usually clad in a jacket, even in summer. I knew that he saw blood peaking from the bandages, the exertion from tensing causing them to slide. I knew he saw our bloody razors in Max's hands. I knew all of this, but I still stood my ground.

"We have a reason," I said, my tone calm.

"Oh?" Iggy was looking amused.

Max stood beside me, smiling spitefully. "Because we don't want to live anymore, Sherlock," she said.

"Then why are you still here?"

"Because we're not giving up. Because that's what our parents want us to do." Iggy paled. Max looked at me, and I nodded.

Max and I left the school grounds, her telling me that I could go to the stream and wash off while she got everything from her dad's place. I wasn't listening, really, because there was only one thing on my mind: Iggy knew.

* * *

**3RD PERSON**

"Fang, why don't you wash up at the stream and then go back to the house. I'll grab my stuff and meet you there. If Dad's home, he'll beat me, but I'll be fine. The worst he uses is a knife, anyway, which we already do to ourselves." Max laughed lightly as she said this, then looked at Fang expectantly.

"Yeah," Fang responded. "I haven't aten properly in a month, though. We'll go shopping for food afterwards. See if you can swipe non-perishables from your dad's."

"I don't know, he never feeds me. I'm not like you, who has his own house to himself, Mr. Neglected." Fang paled, and Max stiffened. "Right. Why don't you just let the memories out?" she asked under her breath, shaking her head.

Iggy couldn't believe what he was hearing. Fang and Max were walking away from the school, but Iggy had extraordinary hearing. They were quiet, but he could still hear them.

Fang was neglected by his parents? Max was abused? This didn't make any sense to him. Max was bubbly and happy, if not a little sarcastic. She was best friends with Nudge, a peppy African American girl with a bad case of frizzy hair. They always joked around... but what if that was all just a mask? Iggy knew every one in the ninth grade, no matter who it was. He'd talked to everyone at least once. And Max was happy, not depressed, not suicidal... Or was she?

How much had she been hurting to put on such a mask?

Fang was a different story. He never let any emotion show on his face, but his eyes betrayed him every time. Iggy could read him easily when his eyes were showing such strong emotions. Sometimes, he had to look away. Sometimes, it was too painful for Iggy to look. But that still didn't excuse why he was hurting himself. In the sixth grade, Iggy remembered Fang singing in the music room alone. He followed Fang to see what he was doing, possibly tell all of his friends that Fang had a big secret. He racked his brain for answers as to what he was singing about, but only one line came to his mind from the song.

_Nothing I can do now that you're gone, no way to bring you back._

Iggy never knew. He never knew that his peers were hurting so badly, so much that they'd inflict pain onto themselves to feel whole. His mind flashed back to the scars on Max's arms. The words '_beautiful disaster__' _stuck out. There was nothing beautiful about cutting. It was sick and disgusting.

But what could Iggy do about it? He wasn't in a position where he should help Max or Fang. He was an outsider who merely caught them, nothing else. His pointless conversations with Max and Fang didn't allow him to intervene in their lives.

He did the best thing that he could do. He swore he would never tell anyone to himself.

* * *

_**Blake again. I'm not mean, I'm just giving Abby payback for stealing my Pokemon game. You know how it is.**_


	6. The Stream

**ASDLKFJA;SDLFKJ HAPPY BELATED FORTH OF JULY, ALL YOU AMERICANS WHO READ THIS! Personally, I hate the fourth. Not the holiday, just the day in general. Bad stuff always happens on this day. My grandpa died, I had a Grand Mal Seizure at Blake's house one year (I owe my life to a turkey baster for that), and my cousin had a kidney stone... yeah... *Awkwardly clears throat***

**Hi! I leave for camp tomorrow! GASP. I won't be able to update for a month, doesn't that stink? Anyway, I'm sorry about Blake putting up author's notes, but he's kind of right. My laziness in editing is a huge problem... OH WELL. I get back the 5th of August, though! I'll be sure to update THAT DAY EXACTLY. **

**This chapter goes by really slowly, so there's not a lot of action in it. Sorry, but it's needed.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Maximum Ride, James Patterson does.**

* * *

**FANG POV**

My thoughts were swirling into a convoluted mess as I lifted my shirt over my head, changing into the swim trunks I'd retrieved from home on the edge of the stream. Iggy knew. He was the most popular person in the grade—even someone like _me _knew that much—and surrounded by countless friends. There was almost a definite guarantee that he would tell anyone about my secret. Max's secret.

And then what?

I tried picturing scenarios of possible outcomes, but I couldn't draw anything out of my thick skull. The cool water of the stream rippled as I waded out to my waist. There were just too many questions and barely any answers, and it bothered me to no end.

My thoughts diluted as I completely submerged myself in the water. I cleaned my cuts, probing a few that Max had done to me. They were deep, but not worrying. She kept true to her promise.

But would Iggy, though we had promised nothing?

My thoughts circled back to him at the very end of it. Would he tell? Wouldn't he? I tried not to think of it while I lay on my back, floating in the water. It was a sensation similar to what flying must be like. The sky was the same blue it always was, the clouds a murky white, as if on the brink of transformation. Things like these were old news. The sky never changed—it was _always _the same. But there were countless happenings going on in my life right now.

The sluggish current was definitely carrying me down the stream, so I lifted myself out of the water and waded back to where my clothes were. Thinking too much would only end in more hideous scars on my arms.

I gazed loftily at my scars. No doubt, they were hideous, but they were _me_ in some strange, disturbing way. In some way that I couldn't identify. My gaze hardened into a glare at the scar on my chest, starting from a few inches below the right side of my collar bone and running diagonally to my left hip. It was definitely the most gruesome thing that had ever happened to me.

I shut my eyes, trying not to think about it, and submerged myself in the clear water again. My raven hair coiled around bubbles as I held my breath, faintly hearing the rush of the stream—but otherwise nothing.

When I resurfaced, I noticed that I wasn't alone. At the messy directions I had given Max to the stream, I figured it would take longer for her to actually get here. But she was here, clad in a faded gray bikini. I remembered telling her to wear as little clothing as possible—not in a disturbing sense—so we could clean easier.

She put down her towel, retrieved her shampoo and a bucket, and then dipped a few toes into the water, frowning at the temperature. "Hey Fan-" she started, but then quickly stopped herself. Max stared at my chest, her eyes wide. Slowly, she walked towards me, as if in a trance, and placed her hand on the tip of the scar, tracing it down to my hip. I shivered.

"Max?" I asked. "Earth to Max?"

She knew I couldn't have done this to myself. She also must have been able to see the few ribs that protruded easily from my skinny state from not eating properly. I could clearly see a few of hers, too.

Max blinked a few times, and her hand shot away from my chest like it was burning her. "What happened?" she whispered, her eyes never leaving my scar. She put a hand on her mouth, but it was too late. My eyes glazed over as I thought of it.

"_We don't have enough money to take care of him!" Dad shouted. Mom froze, her hands shaking slightly at the revelation._

"_It doesn't matter, he's our child. We can't do this to him! He's only eleven!"_

_I watched as my parents fought. I was spying, and I knew it was wrong, but there was something urgent about the conversation I was witnessing._

"_It's him or me, Leonie," Dad said softly. He only used her name when pleading, or when absolutely serious. He was both at the time._

"_Darian, I don't see what he's going to do when we're gone. He'll be alone!"_

"_He's alone anyway. Only his friends talk to him. He's a burden. A mistake. We don't need him, can't you see?"_

"_I don't want to see." _

_A mistake. That's what I was. I was just a mistake. The emotions were billowing up inside of me, and I couldn't help hiding behind the two of them, listening to them talk about how worthless I was._

"_Is that true?" I asked quietly, coming into the kitchen. "I'm a mistake?" My voice was small, like I couldn't believe it. Maybe I should have. That way, I wouldn't waste my time._

_Mom started crying. Dad, though, Dad was furious. He waltzed straight up to me and slapped me. Mom cried harder. The sting didn't go away, either. But it wasn't a sting from the slap, it was more from Mom's crying._

"_You made her cry." His tones were etched with malice, and I was instantly intimidated by them. Dad was never violent. He had never hit me before. And when he was on the verge of doing so, Mom always stopped him. But why didn't she right now? It was like she had given up on me._

"_No, I didn't. You made her cry, Dad," I said, refusing to believe that I was the source of her distress._

_The comment seemed to infuriate Dad even more than before. Faster than I thought possible, he pushed me into the kitchen table. My back hit the corner, and I bounced off of it and into the window face first. _

"_Darian!" Mom screamed._

"_He deserves it. He's a mistake."_

I blinked as my senses came back to the usual. There was someone calling my name, but my hands were covering my ears. I removed them, looking blankly at Max. When had she gotten here?

"Fang, I forgot about you and remembering." Her tone wasn't pitiful. It was understanding, and I liked that.

My senses clicked, and I remembered how I was bathing in the stream. How Max had seen the scar. Asked what happened.

"My dad did it," I said. She sucked in a breath, like she was expecting it to be something like that.

And then she did something I didn't expect her to. She flung her arms around my neck. It was like she was apologizing for bringing it up. I stiffened, but returned her embrace, feeling a little awkward with all of the contact that was going on between us. I could feel her heart resonating, beating quicker.

I smirked. Even Max could feel embarrassed in these situations. It was like she hadn't planned hugging me in the first place. She only acted on impulse; we were one of the same like that.

We pulled back at the same time, saying nothing else. I lathered my own shampoo onto my head and dumped a bucket of the cool water on my head to rinse it. I repeated this until I was fully clean.

Max was doing the same thing. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed she had bruises on her body, as well as scars. _From the abuse_, I thought to myself before asking her about it. It was easier to detect where foreign scars were from on her than me. The sleeve of scars from cutting on the both of us were obvious, though.

It was impressive.

"Done?" I asked. She whipped around, like my presence was forgotten.

"Yeah." Max gathered her things. "This is better than stealing a shower while Dad's not home."

"There's going to be a lot of better things than that now," I reassured her.

* * *

"Do you think Iggy's going to tell?" Max asked. We were at the library in town doing our homework; I'd already told her about not staying in the house for a while. She felt the same way.

"I've been thinking about that all day," I said, sighing heavily. "I think he will."

"Great. Just great. I've been hiding scars for four years, and my downfall is going to be at the hands of a pyromaniac."

I rolled my eyes. "Don't you mean _our _downfall?" I asked, smiling slightly. "We're in this together now."

It was true. Max was living with me. Our secret came as a pair. Now that we were aware of each other's habits, Max and I were inseparable. It wasn't like a friendship, but the curiosity had evolved into a caring. Friendship wasn't part of the hypothetical deal yet.

"Sorry, Mr. Neglected," she grumbled, circling an answer to an algebra problem she had just tackled.

"Poor you, Miss Abused," I teased. If she could use those names, I could, too. Max rolled her eyes again, and I chuckled, the sound echoing in the quiet library.

"But still," Max said, turning over the paper of a worksheet, frowning as she realized there was a back-side. "What'll we do if Iggy _does _tell? The school will know I ran away with you."

Strangely, I liked how that sounded. _Ran away with you. _It was like we were fugitives.

"And then they'll know I don't have parents."

"I'll be sent back to my dad, and you'll be in foster care. Isn't that just dandy?"

"Let's just hope he doesn't tell," I said, "I'd rather not think about Iggy Griffiths _and _Mr. Demchuck's impossible History homework."

She laughed. "Mrs. Clark has too much free time with her and her cats. I mean, thirty quadratic equations? I'd rather die."

I smirked at her. "There's a lot of things you'd rather die than do, Max."

She blinked. "Oh. Right. I forgot," she said, circling another answer to a complicated equation.

"Lucky," I said under my breath. It seemed like she heard me, though, but Max didn't do anything to show she did.

* * *

**Hi. I was listening to my favorite band (Mayday Parade) while writing this, and I got such weird looks by Blake. XD. He's always at my house, so it's not weird.**

**You probably don't care about this, but... I JUST CAUGHT ALL 150 POKEMON IN POKEMON GREEN! :D My Charizard is kind of badass.**

**I'LL MISS YOU ALL WHEN I'M AT CAMP! D: Bye for now!**

**~SilenceIsInfinite**


	7. Nightmares

**WELL HELLO THERE! Huzzah, I am back from camp! I'm going to share a little camp story with you about my beloved *Laugh* backpack, that had to do with camp. **

**So, I had this really ugly backpack that was a dark orange and black. It had a gaping hole in the side of it, too, and it was extremely old. **

**Last week, it rained really hard. And guess what? MY CABIN FLOODED! I thought I that I saved everything, but my dear ugly backpack got caught in it.**

**When we came back, I was worried that my DS was gone and soaked in water, seeing as the water went up to my knees... but I couldn't find my backpack. It was actually in the bathroom (My DS made it out alive!). ANYWAY. I got all the the things I needed out of my backpack, and forgot about it. **

**About 30 girls at camp got sick. Because of this, the camp director asked everyone to clean out their cabins. Dora, my hungarian counselor, found my backpack and told me that it "Smelt like shit" and that I needed to get it out of the cabin. She left it on the porch.**

**But of course, I was too lazy to bring it up to the dumpsters.**

**And then it rained. On my backpack. **

**THREE DAYS LATER, my friend Sarah was just like, "Abby can you get this bug off of your bag? It's annoying me." **

**See, it wasn't a bug (Which I found out when I poked it with a stick). It was the exo-skeleton of a giant bee! And, you guessed it, there was a bees nest inside of my backpack! **

**I got a giant stick and used it as a rod and threw it out. LOLOL. **

**Disclaimer: James Patterson owns Maximum Ride, not me. (Song used in this chapter is Cut by Plumb)**

* * *

**FANG POV**

It was late. I knew it was late, most likely past midnight, but I still sat up in the old twin bed that I couldn't even call as my own anymore.

The first thing I was aware of was that it was dark. It was an obvious thought, but it comforted me strangely. The second was that I had just had a nightmare. It was somewhere in my subconscious, filling my brain, but I couldn't remember any detail about it. All I did know was that it was absolutely terrifying.

I had two urges right then: to cut, and to find Max. The first one made sense, but the second? What would Max do? She was probably in the same situation.

_But, _I thought to myself, _if she is, then you're doing her a favor. _Was I? How did I even know that Max was asleep?

I didn't know. I didn't know anything about it. But I still clung onto denial due to fear: I didn't want to venture in my house more than I had to. I felt like I was the eleven year old boy wondering when his parents would come back from a business trip. I felt like the boy who had assumed that they were dead at the age of twelve.

I was scared.

Even so, I plucked the blankets away from my body and stepped out of my warm bed. The air was frigid, a pool of moonlight peeking through my translucent curtains. It was too dark to see anything but a few details: the floor in front of me, and the door.

I turned the knob of the door and walked down the familiar hallway. Badly, I wanted to shut my eyes, but I wouldn't be able to find Max if I didn't.

My feet stopped moving halfway to her room. There was something I could hear coming from inside. It started as a hollow hum, but as I listened more carefully, it was singing.

_I do not want to be afraid_

_I do not want to die inside just to breathe in_

_I'm tired of feeling so numb_

_Relief exists_

_I find it when I am cut_

_Pain_

_I am not alone_

_I am not alo-_

Before I could stop myself, I pushed the door of Max's room open. There she was, cutting, right on the white sheets.

I don't know what came over me. But I took the razor from her hand and pulled her in a tight embrace. We seemed to be doing that more than I thought.

My thoughts cooled down when Max put her arms around me. _I am not alone_. The words bounced off of my head. I grinned wildly.

_I _made Max feel that way. _I _made her feel like she wasn't alone. Warm feelings coursed through my entire body. Whatever she was singing made me feel so happy, so _ecstatic, _that I seemed to forget everything that ever happened to me. All I needed was Max.

"Fang?" Max whispered. She was clinging tightly onto me, her arms wrapped around my neck. I looked up to meet her eyes. "You're smiling," she noticed.

I calmed myself down and broke the embrace. My shirt had blood on it, and was a bit wet from it. I started cleaning up Max, when she put her hand on my wrist.

"Don't," she warned. "I can do it."

My eyebrows shot up and disappeared beneath my bangs. "Are you sure? There's a lot."

I watched Max clean up with quick precision. The bandages were tight, the blood cleaned in a matter of minutes, and Max changed—with me looking in a different direction after an explicit warning—and lying on her bed.

"Why'd you come in here?" she asked, settling into her sheets.

"Nightmare."

The one word was enough to make the both of us shudder. _Nightmare _was what our lives had come down to, so living it in both sleep and reality would be absolutely terrifying. It _was _horrid, the fact that I couldn't remember anything, and also the fact that there wasn't anything that Max could do to help.

It was my own insanity.

It was like I didn't have enough insanity in my life already. Quite a few times I would ask myself, _what would my parents do if they saw me right now? _But I don't have the answer to that. I don't know what they would do if they ever saw me again. Maybe they wouldn't recognize me. Maybe they would be disappointed.

But who knows?

I doubted that I could ever see them again. And the only possible way _to _see them again would be looking for them. But I wasn't that desperate. I didn't love them enough to look for them. The entire thought was absurd. My life came down at the rash decision of wallowing in my own pity. I was selfish.

In the midst of all my thoughts, I noticed that Max's breathing became deeper. She had already fallen asleep on her side, a few locks of hair covering the side of her face. I pulled the strands behind her ear.

"Goodnight," I whispered, stroking her hair for a few seconds. Quietly, I walked to the door and left it open.

* * *

**THIRD PERSON**

"Goodnight," Fang whispered, waking Max from her sleep. She didn't move, though. Max could hear his footsteps leaving her room, and an aching pain welled inside her chest. She didn't want him to go. Max wanted Fang there to make sure that she could have a distraction.

Max felt bad, the way that their friendship was mainly for each other's benefits. Her gut wrenched; Fang was like an illusion. A distraction. Like a medicine.

But he was addicting.

Max couldn't help herself from thinking that. It was true, in her mind—Fang was certainly addicting. More than once, she had found herself asking why she hadn't ever spoken to him before the past two weeks. He was caring. Funny. Idiotic.

And just like her.

Max let out a cool breath. Thinking about Fang made her feel like she wasn't alone. Why else would she have sung it out loud?

Two fingers found their way to Max's mouth as she felt herself grinning from ear to ear. What was the embrace that Fang held her in? Whatever it was, it was numbing. Almost as good as cutting. Just as addicting.

But how long would he stay there? Sure, she was sleeping in his house and could reach him in a matter of seconds, but for how long would she be able to live this luxury?

Max suddenly thought of Iggy, and the fact that he was the person who knew their deepest secrets. Max was suddenly envious of Fang. He didn't have any friends. He didn't have as many people to hide his scars to.

Her mind felt like it had just entered an encoded problem. Fang _did _have to hide his scars; he was predictable. Everything that had happened revolved around how easy it was to spot that he was a cutter.

Was it harder, or was it not? Could Max really decide on it? At the moment, it was too much to think of at such a dark hour. Yet her bones arched into the twilight, and she was unable to think clearly.

Max didn't fall asleep for another hour. But that entire time was spent contemplating about the ultimate mystery—Fang.

* * *

**I missed writing, a lot. I'm planning on writing another story, so make sure you read that as well (Although I'm still developing the plot...). WRITE YOU LATER!(;**

**~SilenceIsInfinite**


	8. It's All Over

**OHMYGOD. I HAVEN'T UPDATED THIS STORY IN FOREVER. I'M SO SORRY! I just couldn't get into the depressing character of this story, and it was really bothering me with all the attempts I did. This chapter isn't really good, but it's got a LOT of plot in it.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Maximum Ride, James Patterson does.**

* * *

**FANG POV**

I walked into the lunch room with my heart thumping in my ears. Although I hated to admit it, I was scared, scared of what would happen when I would talk to Iggy about my cutting. The questions were ringing in my ears, joining the erratic thumping of my heartbeat, swimming in my mess of tangled thoughts. _Did he tell someone? What if he did? Will Max and I be alright if he had?_

My tongue ran over the black ring over my lip nervously. Each question that barged into my brain twisted into the equation; it was only adding to my panic.

I let out a shuddering breath when I reached the table where Iggy sat with his friends, laughing at a joke one of the boys had said. Before I could stop myself, two fingers tapped themselves onto Iggy's shoulder in an attempt to gain his attention. I grit my teeth and forced the dismay to exit my brain.

"We need to talk," I said surprisingly evenly. I was almost positive that I would vomit from anxiety and anticipation.

Iggy nodded and followed me, leaving his confused friends at the table. It must have been a strange sight, the school emo with the most popular boy in the grade.

"Well?" Iggy asked, shutting the door to the empty classroom. He flicked on the lights and sat atop one of the tables, his feet resting on the back of a chair. "What's up?"

My eyes shot daggers at him. "I need to know if you to-"

"What happens if I _do _tell someone about your neglect and Max's abuse? About your cutting habits?" Iggy asked. He smirked cockily, as if everything were going to go his way. For some reason, I wanted to wipe the smirk off of his face.

"I'll go into foster care. Max will be brutally abused by her father," I said, staring into his ice eyes. He paled instantly. "That, or we'll go into a psychiatric ward for self-harm, depression, and suicidal thoughts."

Even though I looked calm and collected on the outside, my heart was dragging behind with all the thoughts occupying my brain. Was the reaction Iggy gave me due to him already telling someone? I didn't think I could deal with it if that's what it was. I'd rather die.

He shook his head suddenly, as if trying to escape his thoughts. "I didn't tell," Iggy whispered. I let out a shaky breath that I wasn't aware I was holding. He snapped forward and jumped from the table, walking slowly towards me. "But here me out. The fact that you cut yourselves, cut _each other_... It's sick. It's twisted."

I couldn't argue with Iggy, because he was right. Everything he said was true. Max and I were monsters, unable to contain themselves from hurting each other.

* * *

**THIRD PERSON**

He'd seen it. He'd seen everything that had happened. He knew about Fang, and about Max, although he couldn't believe a single thing that was happening. The words replayed themselves as he walked to the office, drowning him in the even and merciless words Fang had told Iggy. He ran his finger over the smooth surface of his phone. He'd need proof, and he'd gotten it from the conversation that the two just previously had.

He felt like everything would be normal again if Max and Fang were gone from the school, like everything would fall back into place.

"Hello," he said, walking up to one of the secretaries. She was a petite woman most likely in her mid forties with pink studded glasses with a prescription so heavy that her eyes seemed to be twice their normal size. "I'd like to see Principal Pruitt. It's very urgent."

A curious look settled into the woman's eyes, but diminished when she saw the hard look that he gave her. She sighed and dialed a number onto the old telephone and spoke with Pruitt to inform him that a student was to talk to him.

"This way," she said, allowing him to enter a narrow hallway.

The room from the third door on the left was slightly bigger than the rest of them, for that was where Pruitt's office was. It was a typical room, expectant of a principal of any school. A circular table with two chairs and a mahogany desk with his name on a tag. There were no personal belongings to signify that this room was any different than the rest, not even a calendar with pictures of one of his hobbies or interests.

"What is it, boy?" Pruitt asked him in his deep voice as he entered the door and took a seat at one of the chairs at the table. In response, he slid his phone across the table, the screen on and open.

"Play it," he said, watching as Pruitt picked up the device. He waited for the three minutes of the video for him to say anything, but he seemed to be shocked into silence.

When Pruitt did say something, it was a curt 'thank you' that clearly dismissed him. He stood from the chair, watching as Pruitt dialed a number on the phone and urgently spoke to the guidance counselor of the school.

He smiled in satisfaction. Now everything would go back to normal.

* * *

**FANG POV**

"Would Blake Walker and Maximum Ride please report to the principal's office? Blake Walker and Maximum Ride to the principal's office."

I paled instantly at the mention of my name on the intercom, my hands already itching to find my razor. I looked across the room to find Max staring at me with sorrow, because she knew how badly I reacted to my name. She knew how much I hated it.

We left the room in silence, not talking until we were in the empty hallways. "What do you think is going on?" she asked me, her eyes wide. We were never called down to the office together, always separately or with other people. I shrugged, my tongue too dry to speak.

We reached the office, where the secretary allowed us to go straight to the principal's office. In the doorway, I panicked. Mrs. Davi, the guidance counselor, was also there with Pruitt. I gulped but kept my face placid as I sat down at the chair on the left, Max the one on the right.

"Why are we here?" Max asked innocently. If I hadn't known better, I would have thought that she was honestly confused, but it all looked so fake after seeing the majority of her expressions. How could Pruitt not see the desperation and vulnerability in her eyes?

Mrs. Davi nodded towards me. "A student overheard a conversation with Blake and another student, James Griffiths."

They knew.

Pruitt continued, running a hand through his black hair. There were gray streaks in it from his growing age. "Let's get to the point: would you mind taking off your jackets and rolling up your sleeves?"

They _knew_.

Max and I looked at each other out of the corner of our eyes before looking at Pruitt again. "No thanks," Max declined politely. "It's quite chilly in here."

Mrs. Davi looked aggravated, slamming her hands on the table. Pruitt held out a hand to calm her down. Two seconds passed before she spoke again. "You don't have a choice."

Max and I hesitated before peeling our sweatshirts from our skin. These past few days have been exceptionally hard on us, resulting in more scars than we would find possible. We had started cutting on our stomachs because of the lack of room on our arms.

Pruitt and Mrs. Davi gulped almost simultaneously at the horrendous sight of our scars. There was no way for us to make an excuse. The scars were too deliberate, too intricate, to be an accident.

Their eyes raked our arms up and down with pained expressions on their faces, and Mrs. Davi exhaled deeply when she saw Max's deepest scar: the _beautiful disaster. _

"Did you two do this?" Pruitt asked disbelievingly. There was no more time for lies, because they already knew. It was an unspoken agreement.

"Yes," I said, glancing at Max, "and sometimes to each other."

The interrogation was beginning, and I would start remembering too many things. I would lose control, and the two people who had authority would know how much of a monster Max and I were.

Pruitt asked his next question slowly. "Where are your parents?"

No. No. I didn't want to think about my parents. My expression went blank as I tried to focus on something else, something different than them. Remembering would only lead into more blood, more blood spilled on my arms, or my stomach. My hands itched at my sides, and Max gave me a comforting look.

Pruitt grit his teeth. "Where are your parents?" he asked, louder this time. My eyes glazed over.

"Stop it!" Max yelled at him; Mrs. Davi and Pruitt's eyes widened at her tone of voice. She motioned to me. with her left hand. "Don't you see what it's doing to him? You're giving him more pain! _We don't want to remember_!"

She panted, out of breath, as she screamed at Pruitt. I was alert now, and my gaze hardened on the two school authorities.

"My parents left me when I was eleven and never returned," I said icily. My tone was calm and deadly, like it was caught in the eye of a storm. "I started cutting then."

"My dad's been abusing me ever since my mom died when I was six.. I've got bruises and scars to show it. Cutting started at eleven. I live with Fang now, and we're in this together, whether you like it or not."

There was a silence as Pruitt and Mrs. Davi absorbed all of the new information. They had wide eyes. This was certainly not how they remembered the two of us. I was always the quiet kid in school, but Max was creating more impact than me. She was perky, intelligent, and always surrounded by friends, and it was confusing the two of them that she would so something like self harm. It confused me when I first saw her, but I had to understand.

"Why?" Pruitt asked. "Why do you hurt yourselves?"

I answered for the two of us, my tone still calm. "Because, Pruitt. It's better to feel pain than nothing at all."

* * *

**What'd you think? This chapter is really important, but I'm sorry that it isn't as descriptive as I'd want it to be. I was thinking more about the dialogue, and I'm WAY too lazy to change it. Eh, whatever.**

**~SilenceIsInfinite**


	9. Worry

**Well hello there. I know, I know. "WHY HAVEN'T YOU UPDATED IN FOREVER!?" Well, I'm currently a student, and I'm hating algebra. Curse you, 8th grade! I've had a lot of homework, and no downtime. And get this: **

**MY ENGLISH TEACHER LIKES READING MORE THAN WRITING. So we don't get to write often. AUUUGH!**

**For those of you who read my other story, Familiar Encounters, I'm in the middle of writing that chapter, but I'm not really in the mood for that yet. I was feeling down. BOOM. PAINFULLY SHY! Happy reading, you guys (Wait, who even reads this?)**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Maximum Ride, James Patterson does!**

* * *

**FANG POV**

There wasn't much to pack.

I would think that, especially after the fifteen years of living in the same house, I'd have trouble deciding on what to keep and what to leave. There were so many things in this house that were ancient, relics of the memories my family and I had all been too. Forced from my family, like I wished they were... It wasn't a matter of deciding what to keep or not anymore. It was about what not to burn.

My clothing was already placed in my school backpack, along with what little items I had wanted to keep. My backpack was light; there wasn't much of either.

There was one other thing I wanted from this house. One thing, but was the cost of my sanity worth it? I exhaled deeply, trailing my index finger to the waistband of my jeans. My pockets were emptied by both Pruitt and Mrs. Davi, revealing two of my many razors, one being my most sharp one.

Mrs. Davi had to excuse herself for a while after she saw the dried blood on it.

I found myself smiling faintly at the memory of it as I pulled the razor out of the waistband of my jeans. They hadn't checked here because I always wore tight jeans, and I wondered now if they had would have cared if I had one on me. The answer was most likely negative.

Every breath I took was to steady myself, each one loud and shuddering. If I breathed through my nose, I felt like I would suffocate. The door opened to my parent's bedroom.

_They were here, _I thought, running my fingertips across the now foreign wall of my parents bedroom. Although my parents were most likely alive, they had been dead to me for so long that all of the memories were coming too quickly, piling one another on top of each other. Instead of being in the body of a fifteen year old, I was eleven again, telling myself that this room would forever be forbidden.

I should have listened.

The photograph trembled once it reached my shaking hands. There were two people: a woman in a long white dress with a smile warm enough to light up my core, and a man gazing at her with adoration in his eyes. I flipped the photograph over, reading the messy scrawl of my father's handwriting.

_Leonie and Darian, forever and always._

Tears escaped my eyes, blotting the pen with thick mistakes. My hands reached up to the middle of the paper, preparing to rip it.

_They'll really be gone if you do it, _a part of me said. There were no devils or angels sitting atop my shoulders, because if there were, the two of them were working together. _It could all be over._

I closed my eyes, making the tears fall at a more frequent pace. When I opened my eyes, the photograph as still intact, in one whole piece.

I couldn't do it.

Frustrated, I tried again and again, but each time I couldn't bring myself to rip it to shreds. I couldn't bring myself to forget about them.

The tears wouldn't stop falling now, and I was beginning to feel weak from all the emotions pouring out of me. It was tearing me apart rapidly, like what I wanted to do so _badly _to the photograph; it's what I _should've _done.

_Release. _The thought came to me quickly, like a light at the end of a tunnel. My fingers fumbled to get a grip of the razor, my brain forcing it to comply to its incoherent instructions.

I lost patience once my hand stopped shaking. All I did was slice and slice, not even caring about the lack of spacing on my arms.

My vision was somewhat blind, the only thing my eyes interpreting being crimson. Nothing else mattered but the blood on my arm, dripping onto the dusty and aged carpet. There were no distractions, not even from the black dots dancing over my eyes. I knew I had to stop, but I couldn't. I couldn't go back and remember.

As the once iron grip on my razor went limp, I couldn't help ask myself: when did I decide not to depend on my parents? Was it when I realized they were never coming back?

...Or was it when I realized _I _was the monster, and not the one under the bed?

* * *

**THIRD PERSON**

Lauren Davi was a wreck. She and Ethan Pruitt had decided to wait until Saturday to move Max and Fang to a psychiatric ward in Colorado Springs, and she was thankful that the teenagers would be in good hands. Lauren sighed, glancing down at the paper in her lap as she drove to the house that Fang and Max lived in.

She had been more than shocked after she had seen their scars. She had been _frightened. _She wasn't frightened of them, she was frightened _for _them. All of the blood shed to create those scars... It was on their own decision, their own accord.

For that, Lauren was frightened. Petrified, actually.

The door of her car closed, and Lauren glanced at the old home in front of her. The paint was chipped, obviously not redone in years. The shutters on the windows were falling off, and even the slightest wind caused them to whistle in agitation.

_This isn't a home, _Lauren bluntly thought, _this is a haunted warehouse. _That's what it looked like, of course.

She coughed as she entered the house, scattered dust from the swift opening of the door causing dust to fly in all directions. There was a faded green couch in a living room, a cracked coffee table cluttered with water bottles. Other than that, the living room was empty, seemingly robbed. Perhaps Fang had sold the other things in attempt to regain some money.

Every floorboard creaked as she walked past other rooms. The house was small, more like a town home than a dwelling that a family had lived in with their son.

There was only one noise as Lauren walked down a narrow and dark hallway, which was the eery squeak of the floorboards underneath her heels. She brushed a strand of her black hair behind her neck, feeling as if something was grabbing her.

Lauren stopped as she gazed at the walls of the hallway. She looked over her shoulder to double check, realizing that she was right.

Photo frames. Each one was empty, the glass either cracked or shattered.

Her heels clacked on the wood as she reached the end of the hallway. This was Fang's bedroom. She let out a shuddering breath as her hand turned the knob of the door and entered, the color in her face draining. Lauren felt like breaking down and crying.

There were only a few things in the room: a bed, still decorated with Toy Story sheets; Fang's backpack, which lay atop the comforter of the Buzz Lightyear comforter; and a dresser in the corner. The rest of it was as hollow and empty as the rest of the house.

Lauren wanted to cry when she saw the carpet, dotted with many stains. These stains were a dark and deep brown. They were blood.

Lauren wanted to bawl her eyes out when she saw the walls. Notes upon notes were on each of them. As she stepped forward, tracing the letters of Fang's boyish handwriting, she shivered. _I'm afraid of what I'm doing to myself, but I just can't seem to stop. _Another. _Somehow, I can't hide who I am, though I've tried. _Even more. _Are you living, or just surviving? _A tear ran down her face. _Sometimes, I feel so many things at once that I want to vomit. _Lauren couldn't look anymore, but one note in paint, still wet, made her heart stop. She recognized Max's handwriting.

_Are you lost? _Lauren read, imagining Max asking her the question. Underneath it held Fang's response.

_Yes. Find me, please._

Her heart stopped, and she ran out of the room. She might be out of time.

* * *

Lauren's eyes dilated when she saw him. Cut up, bloody, and unconscious. A razor hung limply in his hand, and his hand was dripping with blood. A photograph lay by his side, a picture of a wedding photo. Lauren started hyperventilating, placing a hand on her chest as she tried to calm herself down. Was he alive?

She saw him breathing, and a few strands of relief crawled through her fright. Lauren needed to get to Max, because she had no idea what to do when Fang was like this.

Sadly, Max had more experience.

Lauren ran into the guest bedroom, finding Max asleep. At the slight opening of the door, Max awoke, alert and eyes scared. Lauren flinched, thinking about how Max was abused. She must have practice to be a light sleeper.

"What is it?" Max asked. "Are we leaving?"

Lauren shook her head, staring at the ground. What would they do if Fang couldn't make it without serious medical attention? Should she be calling 911 instead of talking to Max casually? She exhaled, preparing her answer. "You need to see Fang."

Max was out of her bed before Lauren had even finished her sentence. Max started down the hallway to Fang's room, but Lauren grabbed her wrist. "He's not in there. He's in his parent's room."

Max wrenched herself out of her grip and went in the other direction, asking Lauren, "What the fuck is he doing in there?"

Normally, Lauren would chastise a student for such language, but genuine concern and fear was evident in her voice. This time, she couldn't argue.

"He's cut himself," Lauren said, trying to follow Max's swift pace, "and he's unconscious."

She started sprinting.

Even before she walked in the room, Lauren knew something was wrong. She could hear the sobs wracking Max's body, could hear her mumbling things to herself, things like: _we were in it together._

Lauren didn't walk in, for fear she would encounter Fang's dead body. Each time Max called out his name, Lauren wanted to take another step away from the room. She felt like she was intruding.

The calls of Fang's name were sounding more and more robotic, and toning down to quiet whispers. Soon, the callings were muffled, as if she were hugging his body.

And then it happened.

"Fang!" she heard Max scream, relief in her voice. Lauren sped into the room and watched as Fang looked at Max with recognition. Max pulled him into a hug, and Fang snaked his arms around hers immediately. Together, in a tangle of limbs, they hugged each other, Max crying into the crook of Fang's neck.

It was the first time Lauren truly felt bad about what she was doing, sending them to a mental hospital. She saw the love the two of them had for each other.

This was the best choice.

Why did she feel so guilty?

* * *

**FANG POV**

"We're here," Mrs. Davi said. Max and I got out of the car, our backpacks in tow. She gripped my hand, trying to reassure me.

Cedar Springs was a large, white building with gleaming floors. There were people in wheelchairs going about, others in hospital gowns walking into different rooms. Wooden chairs spread in a 'U' shape in a waiting room, and there were hallways and - surprisingly- pay phones in some of them.

Max and I looked at each other, gulping. I knew what she was thinking without even processing it. It was simultaneous.

_Good luck._

* * *

**Boom. What did you guys think? Did you hate it, did you like it... OH, GOOD QUESTION: how do you guys feel now that they're in a psychiatric ward? **

**~SilenceIsInfinite**

**P.S. Check out the collab I'm doing with Blake! It's called "Definition of Insanity."**


	10. Welcome To Your New Hell

**I'm sorry this is short, but I'm just so tired that I felt like collapsing by the end of writing this.**

**I'll update Painfully Shy every Friday.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Maximum Ride, James Patterson does.**

* * *

"This way," directed Mrs. Davi, pushing through one of the double doors. Max squeezed my hand. We were here.

Cedar Springs was larger on the inside of the building, rather than the outside. The main lobby was a large area that branched to the left to show a waiting room with multitudes of seating, and a check-in window at the main foyer was spacious and clean. Enormous murals of many colors were plastered on the wall, so many of them that it seemed like there wasn't room in between the paintings for anything else.

The three of us stepped up to the window to a bulky woman with pointed spectacles who was tapping her fingers on the keyboard. She hadn't noticed us until Mrs. Davi cleared her throat loudly.

Immediately, the woman put on a bright smile, one that obviously must have taken years to perfect. I could see the distaste in her eyes, though, at the sight of two 'mentally damaged' patients arriving to this place.

After introducing ourselves, the woman said, "We'll take your things, dears. All you need to do is walk down the hallway to the first door on the right, and you'll find Dr. Lore's office."

With the way the woman talked, Max and I apparently were idiots, too.

"Thank you, ma'am," I said politely, inclining my head down in a bow of respect. Mrs. Davi sent us good luck and left the building after that.

With the 'reassuring ease' that Mrs. Davi brought, the absence was both calming and terrifying. I'd always hated hospitals, and had avoided them for as long as I could allow myself. Max, however, seemed even more on edge, as the iron grip she had on my hand only tightened as we came closer to Dr. Lore's office.

"Hello, Max, Fang," a man with dark hair and a long nose said. He wore a lab coat and had a clip board in his hands. This must be Dr. Lore.

"Hi," Max said. We both took a seat at the patient table and let go of our joined hands.

Without Max, my hands were already begging for a razor in my hands to relieve the pain. Hospitals, even psychiatric wards, were filled with too many memories. I couldn't think straight, and wasn't even aware that Dr. Lore was talking to me until Max poked me sharply in the ribs and I winced.

Dr. Lore cleared his throat. "Fang, why do you hurt yourself?"

I blinked a few times. I wasn't surprised with the question, I just had no idea how to answer it. After a few seconds of consideration, I finally answered.

"Well, why do you breathe?"

"I wouldn't live without it," Dr. Lore said, raising an eyebrow at me.

"Exactly."

Dr. Lore looked at me in exasperation before his 'ecstatic-doctor' personality shone through again, and he flashed a too-bright smile.

I was beginning to get more anxious, and I could feel the paranoia rising through me, pumping itself through my veins. What was he going to do with us? What were they going to do to me? Did I really want to stay in this place? What if...?

There were so many ways to answer the last question that I spent the entire time Dr. Lore talked to Max just imagining them. What if my parents had never left me? What if I had never picked up that razor? What if I told someone about my depression? What if I had never met Max?

I swallowed, forcing myself to calm down. Slowly, I controlled my erratic breathing, and opened my eyes to find Dr. Lore staring at me with a worried expression on his face.

"Fang, you don't talk much, do you?" he inquired, genuine curiosity in his tone. Although it was less of a question than a blind statement, I felt compelled to answer honestly.

"Forgive me if I don't talk much at times, it's loud enough in my head."

Max grabbed my hand, but this didn't go unnoticed by the doctor. Thankfully, he chose to ignore it.

Dr. Lore sighed and scribbled something onto the paper in his clip board. "Max, I am going to give you anti-depressants. Fang, you'll have the same, but I'm quite worried about those...voices," he let out another sigh, "you'll take Risperidone as well."

I grit my teeth and listened to Dr. Lore continue to lecture us about the dangers of self harm and self mutilation, but he sighed - yet again - after about ten minutes when he realized that Max and I weren't really listening.

"These are keys to your rooms," Dr. Lore said, handing us both a shiny key, "Fang in room 314 and Max in room 326." He made us give him our razors - all of them, I noted sadly - and our shoelaces.

I could already tell that I was not going to like this place.

* * *

Room 314 looked like a dorm, with two beds. A dresser lay on the opposite wall, with simple objects being broken down. Pens with all of its pieces sprawled out before it, puzzles, and others were spread across the dresser.

Sitting on the floor in the middle of the room was a boy with ashen blonde hair that stuck up in all directions, finishing a puzzle. At the sound of me entering the room, though, he lifted his head from the puzzle - one that was filled with oranges and reds that made an explosion - with bright blue eyes that were filled with innocence.

Blue eyes, so much like my mother's. The absolute dread at all the memories of my mother talking to me, hugging me, laughing with me... It all came back in a wave of grief. There was a clinging sound as something hit the ground - most likely the room key - but I didn't notice. I didn't pick it up.

The blonde stood up and wiped his hands off of his black jeans, seemingly oblivious to the fact that his eyes looked just like my mother's. _Leonie's eyes. _I felt like vomiting.

He extended a hand out to me without as much as a second glance towards my bare arms, giving me a half smile. "I'm Gazzy."

"Fang," I said. At least my brain could preform normally. My heart hadn't caught up.

Gazzy sat back down on the floor and continued to recreate the puzzle in front of him at a fast pace. His eyes darted back and forth with precision as he fit one piece next to the other. The puzzle itself most likely had hundreds of pieces to it, and Gazzy was nearly finished.

"So, Fang," Gazzy said, fitting in an end piece, "why are you here? Other than cutting, but I can see that."

I didn't want to say anything, but my mother's eyes were pleading me to do something, to say something that would make her proud. "I'm here," I said slowly, my eyes flickering between the puzzle and Gazzy, "because I have a problem."

He didn't ask anything else afterwards.

* * *

**Once again, I'm sorry it's short, but there's so many things going on, and I'm just tired. Tired of everything.**

**~SilenceIsInfinite**


	11. Day One

**GUESS WHO'S BACK!?**

**Before I launch into stuff, I have a poll on my profile. PLEASE VOTE! Okay, next...**

**Yeah! I'm alive! Well, actually, I wasn't really at first... But I don't want to delay this chapter! If you're interested in knowing where I was, I'll put it at the end of this chapter, okay? But for now, PAINFULLY SHY!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Maximum Ride, James Paterson does!**

* * *

It was hard to sleep.

Constantly I'd tried focusing on something in the small room that I shared with Gazzy in an attempt to regain some simplicity, but it was pitch black. The only window that would have provided any light was covered by a thin curtain, but even then I couldn't even see my hand, just inches from my face.

My jumbled thoughts were zoning in and out, trying to find an anchor to lock on. There had been such a huge transition that I couldn't even begin to think. My mind, swirling in a mess of jumbled tangents, was targeting anything to think of.

Anything to remind me that this place wasn't real.

Of course, it was stupid to think that. My hands were itching at my sides, twitching and wrapping themselves around my head. I dug my nails into the side of my face, trying to scrape and gain some sort of pain, but it was useless. It didn't hurt.

_I need to cut, _I thought. But of course, I couldn't do that, either. There was nothing that could provide me release. It was almost comical, actually, to spot all of the things that I could normally use as a make-shift weapon turned to nothing. Hell, even the light switches weren't able to flick up and down. They were just buttons.

Unintentionally, I started thinking of Max. How was she doing? Who did she have as a roommate? Was she thinking the same things I was? The possibilities were eating at me, and worry encased itself in my body. I just couldn't shake her from my mind.

She was amazing and strong. Beautiful in every way possible, even when put down to skin and bone. How she became like that still puzzled me, but I found myself not questioning her blonde streaked hair anymore, or her surreptitious look that seemed to etch itself onto her face.

I fell asleep like that, thinking of Max and Max alone, all cuts forgotten.

* * *

"Hey, Fang. Get up, dude."

I rolled uncomfortably on the stiff mattress, blinking the sleep out of my eyes. "Huh?"

"It's time to get up and do our menus," Gazzy said, his boyish clump of blonde hair flowing in every direction on end. He didn't have a shirt on.

I pulled the thin blanket away from my body and stood up. There were small rays of light protruding from the now translucent curtain covering the window. "What time is it?"

Gazzy, catching my eye, shrugged. "Probably past seven." He pulled away the curtain, revealing a window that overlooked a courtyard with a single swing set. He frowned. "Maybe closer to eight."

Now fully awake, I stretched out my arms and moved to the dresser, opening the bottom drawer. Some of my unpacked clothes lay in a pile at the bottom. I pulled out a clean shirt and jeans from it and begun putting them on. Gazzy followed suit, pulling a shirt over his head.

Once dressed, we pulled open the door of the room. It had a circular window on the upper part of the door, one similar to a port window from a boat, and I couldn't help but think of my parents. Who knew where they were, if they were on a boat or dead? The thought made me shiver, and I forced it down.

We turned a left away from the alcove that kept our room and another adjacent to it, down a hallway. There were papers stacked up on one of the tables, and menus with the words _Dining Service _in a script on the front. The papers had all of the names of the patients on them; I sifted through them until I found mine. We grabbed pens and sat at one of the many tables in the hallway, and I again noticed that the chairs were padded with some cushion, not pointed in the least.

I wrote down random things that I wanted for lunch and dinner today and tomorrow (I had come later at night, so I had missed the time in which I'd order food before), while nodding at everything Gazzy said to me. He was trying to lighten up the mood, when I honestly couldn't think straight. The realization that I was in a psychiatric ward had dawned on me.

It was terrifying.

I tried to stifle the shaking in my hands while Gazzy and I walked down the hallway to the community room; apparently that's where we ate meals and did some of our groups. I pushed open the glass doors - without a handle, shocker - and walked to where a few other kids were sitting on the array of the same blue chairs from the hallway.

Immediately I spotted Max, and Gazzy met up with a hispanic girl with big, brown eyes and sat next to her on a different chair. Max smiled at me and I sat down next to her.

"Hey," she said, looking behind her to a woman in blue hospital robes sitting on one of the dining tables; it looked like there was a caterpillar on her face- one of the staff. She laced our fingers together and squeezed my hand.

I raised my eyebrows. "'Hey' seems pretty simple for being in a psychiatric ward," I replied, but nonetheless squeezed back. My eyes scanned over the other kids in front of me for a moment, but there were only two reading books in the back of the room by a book shelf with Dr. Seuss quotes on the wall behind it.

"Well, you take what you can get, eh?"

"Definitely."

Our eyes met. It wasn't anything special, but that one simple glance reminded me how much sorrow and work we were escaping from the real world that we needed to go back to. There was no reason to be here, in a ward with other children from the ages five to fifteen with problems probably worse than ours. There were so many questions that were being hidden in Max's eyes that I wanted to know the answers to, to reassure her and answer them _for _her, but I simply couldn't.

Why was it like this? Who had even found us out, and brought us to this hospital hours from our home? It wasn't fair. The school was paying for our stay here, when they didn't need to. Pity, an emotion I hate almost as much as hope, rung through my veins.

I hadn't realized I was shaking, and that some other kids had arrived to the turquoise chairs in the community room. Max and I, eyes and hands locked, made no effort to look at them, and nether did they. There was sort of a fear that clawed at the back of Max's eyes, telling me to find something that I couldn't see. What was it? What was she feeling? I opened my mouth to ask-

_"Miss Johanne!" _a little girl with pink rimmed glasses shrieked Her brown hair was pulled into pigtails and she carried a doll with her. She was pointing at Max and I. "They're touching!"

We instantly broke apart and winced as the woman from the dining table behind us marched to where we were sitting. She begun ranting about how we all needed to respect each other's "boundaries" and that we were all in the hospital for different reasons, and we needed to work on our own goals instead of focusing on other people.

I watched Max out of the corner of my eye. She was gritting her teeth but held an amused expression, as if she wanted to retort something sarcastic but knew it would only get her in worse trouble. So I went first.

"Actually," I said, calmly. "We're a pair. We came together."

Johanne snorted. "Well you'll have to leave apart then, _sweetie_."

"Yeah, and you'll actually shave off that mustache," Max retorted. Johanne gasped and her hands flew up to her face. The kids who had heard Max started laughing and the two of us smirked.

"Do you want to go to the quiet room?" Johanne asked Max maliciously.

"Do you want me to get you waxing paper?"

Johanne almost growled. "No phone calls for two days. Either of you."

"Oh, no!" Max said, trying to look discouraged. Johanne's face lit up in triumph. "Now I can't call my abusive father or my dead mother! Oh, _rats._"

I gasped as well. "What ever will I do now that I can't call the parents that abandoned me when I was eleven?"

Johanne huffed and marched away, leaving the rest of the people in the room gaping at Max and I. We laughed and gave each other a high five - disrespecting each other's boundaries in the process; oh no. Gazzy, on the other side of the room, laughed loudly and started clapping, along with the rest of the kids.

_Hey, _I thought, glancing at Max. She looked at me, and I knew we were thinking the same thing. _Maybe this place isn't so bad._

* * *

**Okay. Let's be serious. I know so much about what went on in the psych ward because...**

**I WAS IN ONE. FOR ALMOST 2 WEEKS. CAN YOU FEEL THE IRONY? **

**Why, you say? Well, erm, it wasn't really pretty. But I admit, it was a suicide attempt. I don't really think there's much to say, other than the fact that I'm stable and getting help. ^_^**

**~SilenceIsInfinite**


	12. Family Matters

**I am feeling awful. Horrible. There's not a single word to describe it. Forget acting like I'm a peppy person. I feel disgusting, awful, and I don't know how to even ****_make myself feel better. _****I wrote this out of complete anger, but I'm not sure that it'll do anything.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Maximum Ride, James Patterson does.**

* * *

"It's time for school for the older kids," the hideous woman, Johanne, said loudly for everyone to hear. She glared at Max and I and rushed out of the community room and into the hallway, opening the door to a different part of the building with a silver key. She opened it, waiting for the five of us "older kids" to assemble into a line before ushering us quickly. Max, who was last in line, had the door hit her heels on the way out as Johanne slammed the door shut behind her.

"Oops," I heard Johanne say as Max hissed. Max herself flipped off Johanne through the window of the door.

"Oops," she said, sticking out her tongue. Johanne steamed and walked off.

I chuckled and held out my hand for Max as we entered the school room. She squeezed it firmly, and I rubbed my thumb over her scarred hand in circles.

The school room was the size of any other classroom in the school, with shelves lined up the sides. With colored construction paper, a sign that read _Bully Free Classroom! _was hung on the back wall along with other optimistic phrases. The desks were lined up in a horseshoe shape with binders atop them, with a white board on the front wall behind the teacher's desk. Two beanbags were in a corner of the room with other brightly colored decorations on it, with sayings like _It's okay to be mad _on them.

A woman with bleached blonde hair and heels welcomed us. "My name is Miss Ryan, and I'll be your teacher. What are your names?" Her voice was bright, but I could see the distaste in her voice when she saw our bare arms lined up with thick scars, some of them still bright red.

"I'm Max, and that's my best friend, Fang," Max said, jabbing her bony elbow into my side. I held in my wince as she hit some of the new scars that were on my stomach.

"Oh," Miss Ryan said, trying to sound like she was interested. "Did you meet today?"

I almost burst out laughing but let out a little chortle. "Who else do you think made these scars?" I said, raising an eyebrow. Miss Ryan blinked, hearing my voice for the first time. "We knew each other before we got admitted _together."_

"I see..." She gestured to our hands. "We have boundaries here, I'm sure you've heard. Please respect the privacy of everyone here."

"Well, I'm sure you've heard that those rules don't apply to us," Max said. We both found our designated seats, which were right next to each other. We let go of each other's hands, though, and when the heat of Max's hands left mine, I felt myself longing for it to come back, like there was now an empty space in my hand. The feeling lingered with me throughout "school", which was basically just five kids watching four episodes of The Magic School Bus.

During the episode about friction, I couldn't help but think about Max. How many times had we brushed hands, hugged... Cried over each other? Sung together? A blush creeped its way onto my cheeks, and I crossed my arms over the desk and buried myself in my arms. It was stupid to think of that we would do more than hug, to have an actual relationship. Our lives were too...obsolete. Different.

Or were they?

Holding Max was as amazing as holding a razor to my skin. Just as satisfying, just as calming. Numbing, like everything else in the world couldn't compare. The blush deepened. What was I thinking? Max wasn't interested in me. But even as I told myself that, I kept picturing her face, with her blonde hair framing her face and the scar on the side of her face that I had bestowed upon her. I swallowed thickly. Why was I thinking like this?!

The feeling didn't leave me even after I left school, and was talking to Max as if nothing were happening. Did I like her? Did I?

"Do you need to cut? You look really spacey," Max said lowly, so that the two of us could only hear it.

_Yes, Max, but I'm also getting the feeling that I want to shove you against a wall and kiss you senseless._

"Yeah. A lot."

"Free time is after lunch, you know. We could experiment."

_With makeshift weapons, or with our mouths? _I shook my head over and over, my cheeks heating up. I turned away from Max and went inside the community room for group. The girl that Gazzy was talking to this morning sat next to me.

"Hi, I'm Ella," she said brightly, nodding her head to me. I did the same as a response, shoving down my emotions for Max and focusing on Ella. She had shiny brown hair that went down to her waist and sharp nails.

After a long silence, she spoke up again. "You don't talk much, do you?" she said, her tone indicating that she thought of me as a child. I shrugged. "Well, I thought what you and that girl Max did today was really cool." I nodded and looked over to where Gazzy was talking to a girl who looked similar to him. They had the same blonde hair and blue eyes. I'd have to talk to him about it later.

Everyone was silent as a woman who looked no more than twenty five entered the room and began to speak to us. Her name was Ulita, and she spoke with a light Russian accent as she lectured us all about defending against bullies and how it was the most important thing in the world.

"Now, Blake," Ulita said, gesturing to me. I shivered at the use of my name. "Try to bully me."

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Max glare at Ulita, a glare so heavy with hatred that I could see the goosebumps spreading on Ulita's arms as she beckoned me.

All she wanted was a show. Why not give it to her? I stood from my seat, coming closer to her, but not so close as to deplete our "boundaries". I made a move to glare at her, and it wasn't false. She had called me by my name. By _Blake._

"Do you have any shred of confidence to believe that anyone _likes you_? Huh? You go around acting like you own the place when truly, _no one cares! _Have you even _thought _for one minute that the world wasn't about you? You are a _pathetic piece of trash who has done nothing right!_" I was shouting by the end of it, anger coursing through my veins. This wasn't a real fight. This wasn't me, shouting to Ulita. It was me, shouting to my parents, wanting to have my voice finally heard.

"I-I..." Ulita started, dumbfounded. There was no doubt that she hadn't thought that I was going to be rash and actually knock her down so much. "Blake-"

"_No!" _I yelled, interrupting her from her proclamation. "You don't understand what it feels like to be alone! To have no one care for you!" Tears were brimming at the corners of my eyes. "And you will _never _understand. You will _never understand what it feels like. _Do you want to know why? _Because you're the one causing all this pain!"_

Ulita grabbed me by the shoulders fiercely, shooting a pain through my body. "Blake! Calm down! If you need to take space..." She was at a loss for words.

"That's not it." Max came up then, determination in her eyes. Ulita looked at her questioningly. "Blake is the name his parents gave him. The name his parents gave him so lovingly until they _abandoned _him when he was eleven." Ulita stuttered, trying to say something that would make up for whatever she was feeling. Her expression was aghast. Max turned to me and reached up to brush her hand against my face. "Fang... Let's just go take space together."

We left the community room, the rest of the other patients either teary eyed or full of pity. Some had wide eyes, never having me speak to them so much.

The nurse in the hall, an older woman with large earrings, looked at us skeptically as we both entered the hallway hand in hand. "Max, Blake-"

"His name is _Fang,_" Max said icily to her. "And we're taking space. So _fuck off."_

When Max opened the door to her room, I opened my mouth to say something, to tell her that we weren't allowed to be in each other's rooms, but the thought flew from my head as quickly as it had emerged. It didn't matter. Whatever had just happened was still clouding my thinking and I couldn't do anything at the moment. The urge to cut was ripping at my insides, tearing them up until I felt like fire, fire that was burning and incinerating everything in its path. And there was nothing I could do. Nothing I could do at all, because I was in a psychiatric ward. There was no razor at my side anymore.

I felt like vomiting.

Max guided us to her bed, not saying anything as we comforted each other. For a while there wasn't a single thing that could be heard between us, it was just her and me alone. I wrapped my arms around her, feeling the rough skin of hers against mine as I lay down, simply tangling my fingers in her hair and just basking in her scent. It was silent. So silent, almost deafening. But the damage was waiting to be heard.

I bit my lip to keep from screaming, biting it so hard that blood drew, filled my mouth. It tasted coppery, like the pennies that I would teethe in my mouth when I was a child. I swallowed the blood and hugged Max tighter to me, who was now curled up against my chest.

We stayed like that for a long time, just in each other's arms.

Just waiting for the other to say something, to _do _something to magically fix up our lives and transport us back home, erasing the scars and our horrid pasts.

But there's no such thing as magic.

And there was nothing to be said.

* * *

**Do you guys even like this? Do you like seeing what I feel and putting it into the thoughts of Fang? Does this satisfy you? I'm just so...angry... And I don't know what to do. I'm sorry for acting like this, but I'm fucking not.**

**~SilenceIsFuckingInfinite**


End file.
